William Gordon Cloyd Family Papers, 1809-1932

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Bement, Illinois attorney; Piatt County judge, 1879-1886; Postmaster of Bement, 1912-1920.Husband of Lillian McKinney Cloyd of Cerro Gordo, Illinois and the father of six children.

Personal and business correspondence, financial records, clippings, office files, documents, ledgers and scrapbooks.The collection reflects the life of a small town lawyer and his family.A significant portion of the collection is the papers, office and case files of Bryan Wilson, William Cloyd’s son-in-law, a real estate attorney in St. Louis who relocated to Bement and was village attorney as well as conducting a private legal practice.Files from Cloyd’s legal offices include material of the W. S. Pierce Company, Northern Woolen Manufacturing and Unquomonk Manufacturing Company.The collection also includes earlier papers of the Cloyd family and Rev. John C. Campbell, a Presbyterian minister, as well as papers concerning the McKinney, Ewing and Rodgers families.Also included is material from Wilson’s and Frederick Cloyd’s World War I careers.

3 cubic feet of photographs, broadsides, artifacts and published material were transferred out of the collection.

Access:Open for research

Acc. No.:74-84

Processed by:Merleen Dibert

Dsh/2008

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Biographical Sketch

William Gordon Cloyd, Bement attorney and Piatt County Judge (1879-1886) was born near Covington, Kenton County, Kentucky.The Cloyd family was Scotch-Irish and had settled in Virginia before emigrating to Indiana and Gerrard County, Kentucky.From Gerrard County, the family moved to Kenton County, Kentucky where the future judge was born on Oct. 15, 1848.In 1852, his parents David J. and Mary Ann (Roberts) Cloyd received some land in Pike County, Missouri as payment for a debt.So the family moved to Missouri, where they remained until locating permanently in Decatur, Illinois in 1865. Before the family moved to Illinois, W.G. Cloyd attended the Watson Seminary in Ashley, Missouri.After coming to Illinois, Cloyd graduated from Mt. Zion Academy and attended Eureka College for one year.Cloyd taught for four years in the Macon County schools and then decided in 1869, to pursue the study of law.He studied law in the office of John R. Eden at Decatur and was admitted to the Illinois bar in September 1871.Following his admission to the bar, Cloyd moved to Bement where he began practicing law in Piatt County.

In 1876, Piatt County Democrats nominated Cloyd as their candidate to oppose Albert Emerson in the States Attorney race.Emerson won the election by a small margin, but when Judge William McReynolds died in the spring of 1879, Cloyd was selected to run for the vacant post.Cloyd became Piatt County Judge on June 6, 1879, was re-elected to the bench in 1882, defeating Emerson for a four year term.While Cloyd was County Judge, Andrew L. Rodgers served as Piatt County Clerk (1877-1898).Rodgers’s niece and ward, Lillian McKinney, served as her uncle’s deputy in the court house.Miss McKinney, who had attended the Young Ladies Athenaeum in Jacksonville, and Judge Cloyd were married on June 3, 1885 at the Monticello home of the bride’s grandmother, Sibby Campbell.

When Judge Cloyd married Lillian McKinney in 1885, he was uniting with several pioneer families in the Cerro Gordo area.Although Lillian’s parents and a sister had perished in an 1864 diphtheria epidemic, her relatives were among the region’s earliest settlers.The McKinneys’ had arrived in Piatt County from Washington County in 1848, and in 1856, Issac R. McKinney (Lillian’s father) and his step brother, A. L. Rodgers founded the first general store in Cerro Gordo.McKinney and Rodgers also married sisters-Harriet and Jennie Campbell.Harriet and Jennie Campbell were the daughters of the Reverend John Cowen and Sibby (Ewing) Campbell.Campbell, a Presbyterian minister, had been born on December 27, 1802 in Blount County, Tennessee.He was educated in Maryville College, Tennessee and was ordained to the ministry in 1830.With his bride, Campbell moved to Edgar County, Illinois, where he pastored the New Providence and New Hope Presbyterian churches for twenty-five years.During this time, he also preached at Charleston, Grandview, and Paris and served as a Sabbath school agent.In 1857, the Campbells’ moved to Cerro Gordo, where Campbell served the Presbyterian Church until his death on Dec. 31, 1862.His widow, Sibby Campbell who took care of her orphaned granddaughter Lillian, had been born on April 26, 1809, near Maryville, Tennessee.Mrs. Campbell’s father, William Ewing was descended from the Scotch Ewing clan who left their homeland near Stirling Castle on the shores of Loch Lomond to escape to escape Catholic persecution.By way of Londonderry County, Ireland, the Ewings immigrated to America, where they could practice their strong Presbyterian beliefs.First, the Ewings settled in Pennsylvania where they helped to found the New Providence Church.When the Ewings moved to Augusta County, Virginia, they established the New Providence Church near Staunton, Virginia.In 1786, the Ewings settled in Maryville, Tennessee, where they founded the New Providence Presbyterian Church and provided thirty Ewings for the church roll.About 1827, a New Providence Presbyterian Church was organized and built in Edgar County, Illinois, by the Ewings’ who had emigrated from Tennessee.

Like his wife’s forebears, Cloyd decided to stay in Bement.Although the judge maintained his political interests, he did not seek elective office and confined himself to his growing legal practice.Under Woodrow Wilson’s administration, Cloyd served as Bement’s postmaster from 1912 until the Republican victory in 1920.Despite a disabling fall that hampered his ability to walk, Judge Cloyd continued to practice law until his death in April 1932.

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Biographical Sketch

Judge Cloyd and his wife, who died in 1937, had six children.Candace (b. 1886) married Howard C. Johnson and moved to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.Walter C.Cloyd (1888-1964) worked for Mountain States Bell and later Illinois Bell Telephone Company.Gordon Totten Cloyd (1891-1946) was in advertising and worked for agencies in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Dayton, Ohio.Margaret Mary Cloyd (1895-1974) taught French at William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri, until she wed St. Louis lawyer Bryan Wilson.(Wilson’s father had been in charge of Missouri’s eleemosynary institutions.His sister Elizabeth married Henry La Cossitt (1901-1962), editor of Colliers and film writer for Universal and 20th Century Fox.Another sister was married A. E. Mudkins, a prominent St. Louis public relations man. ) After Lillian Cloyd’s death, the Wilsons lived in the Cloyd home and Bryan Wilson practiced law in Bement and Cerro Gordo until his retirement in 1971.Frederick Holmes Cloyd (1898-1934) served in World War I and Donald Rodgers Cloyd (1900-1901) died young.

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Scope and Content

The William G. Cloyd Family Papers, 1809-1971, consist of 20 cubic feet and 12 bound volumes of letters, greeting cards, diaries, certificate, pamphlets, clippings, ledgers, journals, bank statements, checks, bills and receipts, notes, speeches, sermons, contracts, agreements, briefs, insurance policies, wills, mortgages, deeds, abstracts of title, scrapbooks, maps and photographs.Materials contained in this collection were found in the Margaret Cloyd Wilson home in Bement and document the history of the William G. Cloyd family as well as the related Ewing, Campbell, McKinney and Wilson lines.The collection is arranged into three series:The Cloyd Family Papers, 1809-1971; W.G. Cloyd Legal Files, 1821-1932; and Bryan Wilson Papers, ca. 1921-1971.

The Cloyd Family Papers, 1809-1971 (Boxes 1-8 and Oversize BV 1-5) series consists of three sub-series:Correspondence, 1835-1971; Financial Records, 1809-1969; and General Files, 1829-1953.

Correspondence, 1835-1971 (Boxes 1-6) is arranged chronologically and contains letters, greeting cards, postal, and picture postcards. This correspondence pertains to family matters and reflects not only the interests of the W.G. Cloyd family but of the David Cloyd and John C. Campbell families.Letters include the pre-nuptial correspondence of W.G. and Lillian Cloyd; letters from relatives in Kentucky, Kansas, and California; the Cloyd children’s letters home from college, jobs, and the army; later correspondence between Bryan Wilson and his sisters; and an almost daily letter exchange between Gordon Cloyd and his daughter Jane while she was at college in the 1940s.Correspondence for the later years is sparse and contains greeting cards sent to Alice Martin, whose estate the Wilsons administered in the late 1960s.Besides family news, the correspondence also includes WWI letters from Fred Cloyd in France.Significant correspondents include Henry La Cossitt, A. E. Stevenson, who wrote to Judge Cloyd concerning post office appointments, and South Dakota senator Thomas J. Sterling.

receipts, school papers, scrapbooks and wedding announcements.Included in the collection is Rev.

J.C. Campbell’s diary (ca. 1830) describing his activities as an early Presbyterian minister in Illinois, Lillian McKinney [Cloyd’s] diary from the Young Ladies Athenaeum, a sermon on the “Diminution of the Indian Tribes” and McKinney family genealogical information

Legal Correspondence, 1871-1932 (Boxes 8-9) is arranged chronologically and contains Cloyd’s correspondence with clients and fellow attorneys on legal matters.Most items relate to estate and probate cases that Cloyd handled during his sixty year practice of law at Bement.

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Scope and Content

The William G. Cloyd Legal Files, 1821-1932-cont.

Legal Office Files, 1821-1932 (Boxes 9-11 and Oversize BV 6-12) are arranged alphabetically by document type and contain abstracts, administrator’s accounts, and other probate records, agreements, appellate and Chancery Court decisions, deeds, court briefs, land grants, last wills and testaments, and ledgers of firms involved in cases handled by Cloyd.Among financial records included in this sub-series are bound volumes pertaining to the W.S. Pierce Company, North Woolen Manufacturing Company, and the Unquomonk Manufacturing Company.Family legal documents, including land deeds and wills are preserved and include William Ewing’s will (1847) and a folder concerning a Kentucky lawsuit (ca. 1823) involving the Bank of the United States.Also included are biographical sketches of lawyers used in the compilation of A History of the Macon County Bar.

St. Louis Office Files, ca. 1921-1934 (Boxes 11-14) are arranged alphabetically and contain contracts, agreements, briefs, wills, deeds, patents, and legal correspondence.Major topics include Aetna Investment Company, America House and Building Association, Fidelity Bank and Trust Company, General Railroad Coupler Company, Plaza Apartment Building Company, and Republic National Life.These items document Wilson’s St. Louis legal career and his specialty of building and loan litigation during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Case Files, 1931-1971 (Boxes 15-18) are arranged numerically and contain agreements, briefs, insurance policies, wills, inventories of estates, mortgage, deeds abstracts of title, and correspondence.Among case files is the estate of Alice Martin, for which Margaret Cloyd Wilson served as administrix and Bryan Wilson as attorney.These files, primarily probate cases, are mainly those handles by Wilson when he practiced law in Bement and Cerro Gordo.

Personal and Financial Files, 1922-1971 (Boxes 18-19) are chronologically arranged and contain Wilson’s personal office correspondence, Dunbar and Dubail balance sheets, ledgers describing Wilson’s Bement practice finances, and folders of general legal material.Major topics include Bement village legal affairs, Bement fire district items, and the closing of Wilson’s law office when he retired.

WWI Files, 1917-1954 (Box 20) is arranged alphabetically and contains maps, orders, service books and American Legion materials.These items document Wilson’s service as an Army lieutenant in France during WWI.Some items pertain to Fred Cloyd’s WWI service as a Marine.Items pertaining to Wilson’s active role in the American Legion are also included.